Well, I take back my suspicions that we might be short-changed
at the temple. This more than lives up to everything I
might have hoped for.
This one had me laughing the hardest yet.
Takashi had survived so many of these little jaunts. It
never occured to me that anything other than sheer dumb
luck, with emphasis on the dumb, might be involved.
Looking back, I have cause to doubt.
So Genma's even dimmer than we suspected...
And then a screaming, flaming, bouncing devil zoomed
past in a shower of churning water, hollering such devil-words
as "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIYEEEEETURNITOFFTURNITOFF
DAMNYOUTAKASHIIIIIII!"
It occurred to me some time after I responded to Part 2 that
Takashi's mode of leaving the ship, twin rockets attached
to the sides of a rowboat, somehow suits the Principal we
know precisely. This is EXACTLY the kind of overdesign
he comes up with in the manga.
"Yeah," Kiri mumbled, eyes still slightly unfocused. "What
incredible luck to run into an entire army bent on blowing us
and our boat to scrap metal. Couldn't have worked better if
we'd planned it."
"Oh, I did plan it," Takashi cheerfully told her. "Who do
you, hmm, think radioed them with our location?"
(guffaw! Inevitable in hindsight, but _so_ funny.)
employer. It wouldn't be proper to throw him to the piranhas,
Vince mentioned the piranhas: Soun just doesn't know they're
native to South America (shakes head sadly).
They turned and looked at the large stone gate rising
from the jungle on the left side of the river. A small channel,
barely wide enough for one boat, flowed off under it, vanishing
into the mists beyond.
"Very impressive," Soun said neutrally. "I see they got
the carvings of the shoggoths right."
How Takahashi-like in the convenience!
Kiri's confession drifting up. "Yeah. I had no idea anyone except
Saotome-sensei could move that fast. I could hardly _see_
him."
<clip>
"He's not better than me," Genma said. He replayed the
fight in his mind, remembering the moves Inji had made, and
noting the moves Inji hadn't made as well. "He's good, but his
technique and form is a bit sloppy. There were a couple big
mistakes he made; spots where he coulda had me if he'd tried
something else or swung a little tighter."
I liked this: Genma's extensive training proving useful in
picking apart the fight. One sees how skill and experience
might overcome superior physical talent.
"Uh, Takashi?" Kiri finally asked. "If these Nibek things
are extinct, how come Inji-kun got to go ten rounds with one?"
"That's why they're, hmm, extinct."
"Oh."
"I wrote a very cross letter reporting him to the World
Wildlife Fund."
Heh. Just perfect; such an unusual mix of awareness and
unworldliness.
Nodoka woke up. There was a fish in her mouth.
She spat it out, gagged a bit, and then opened her eyes.
Ten thousand bats looked curiously back at her.
This was the point where I surpassed all previous laughter
on this series. This section was just perfect in its
simplicity. Query: is the double-entendre deliberate?
One suspects so.
Conclusion: Next time Genma warned her against going on
a trip with him, she would damn well listen.
Ah HA!!! Another key moment as our heros make their key
life decisions!
"There's a million bats over us."
"Please don't remind me."
"They're LOOKING at us, Kiri..."
Heh. Lovely. You have a real gift for simple but
funny dialog.
"Do I want to see the statues?"
"That would depend on how kinky you are, for half of
them. I personally don't cotton to inter-species affection, if
you take my drift."
Nodoka brightened slightly. "That doesn't sound so bad."
Heh. This is quite an interesting Nodoka you've created. I
can't remember any other version at all similar. Most
writers, me included, seem to assume that "traditional" is
equivalent to "conventional in tastes and drives".
"Yeah, through blind luck," Kiri snorted. "There ain't gonna
be no Chinese chicks with swords showing up to rescue us
here, Saotome."
Like Vincent, I somehow expected this to be their cue. Oh,
well, can't have everything.
Nodoka nodded absently, staring at a statue of two men, a
woman, three eels, and a naughty jaguar. "Amazing attention to
detail," she noted admiringly.
Kiri looked at her oddly and quietly edged away.
"I mean, look at the expression on the third figure as the
jaguar..."
Guffaw. This is just too good.
Minor nit: probably should have been a tiger. Jaguars are
also native to South America.
In hindsight, he realized, it had been a mistake to bring
her.
Hrrup! (completely loses it) THIS is hilarious; NOW he
figures this out?!
"Or the Rodents of Unusual Size?" Soun added darkly.
Heh. What about the Flame Spurts or the Lightning Sands?
The boat rounded a slight bend, and the falls came into
view.
"Dear God, that's at least a 100-foot drop!" Nodoka
wailed. "We'll be killed!"
It's actually remarkably hard to tell from upstream of a
falls how big of a drop you're looking at. Nodoka is likely
low by a factor of at least three.
"She's a kami! Pray, moron!"
Deus ex machina, literally... (or would be, if this worked)
"Who owes me twenty yen," Kiri chimed in.
"...who owes Kiri twenty yen, please use your divine
powers to save us, your good friends, from being splattered all
over these rocks. Please?"
Just the kind of prayer one would expect a kami to heed...
"This is Misuto-no-Kami," the shimmering image said
cheerfully. "I'm afraid I don't have sufficient strength to
answer prayers outside of Japan right now, but if you'll leave
your name, address, karmic number, faith, and the purpose of
your prayer at the sound of the tone, I'll get back to you as
soon as I can. Thank you for choosing Shinto as your personal
belief system!"
Good. VERY good.
"You practice fording waterfalls via skeletal handholds?"
Nodoka dazedly asked.
"It comes up more often that one would, hmm, expect."
Oh, brother. Words fail me.
"Saotome!" Kiritsubo screamed. "I'm gonna kill you!"
"I'm sorry!" he heard Nodoka wail wretchedly. "I was
slipping! I needed handholds!"
Heh. Of course. Kiri should have known this would happen.
"Whatever," Kiri said tiredly. "Let's get moving before
hordes of bloodthirsty savages pop out of the bushes or
something."
They took three steps forward, and then hordes of spear-
brandishing, loincloth-wearing, bone-shaking, feather-
festooned, brightly-painted tribesmen popped out of the
bushes.
It's amazing how well this works for you. This gag must be
decades old, at least, but in your hands it's still hilarious.
Minor nit: Laotian hilltribes don't dress like this.
"You're from Tokyo," the lead tribesman said in slightly
accented Japanese. "Or possibly Osaka. You're likely thieves,
and you've come to take one of our precious cultural artifacts."
Good. I wasn't expecting this one.
The lead tribesman coughed apologetically. "I wasn't
joking about eating the archeologists. It's hard to get enough
protein out here. How much do you weigh?"
This works well humor-wise, but is quite a strain otherwise.
Southeast Asian hilltribes tend to be farmers raising dryland
rice, which has enough protein so that the additional
requirements are quite modest (unlike maize, say, or sago).
Here's where I began to think maybe the entire story should
have been set on New Guinea somewhere.
But, as I say, you get so many good laughs out of this
that I'm certainly willing to suspend MY disbelief...
It was black, mostly. The blackness was interrupted by
stretches of leprous green fungus, weeping a yellow-white
mold. Sadly, there wasn't enough of it to completely obscure
the carvings, which portrayed every form of perversion and
torture that could be performed by a primitive society, and
even a few that couldn't but which had been tried anyway.
There were statues of things that you normally have to smoke
massive amounts of dried mushroom to conceptualize, with
enough tentacles, beaks, membranes, and bulging eyes for an
entire restaurant of seafood buffets. In fact, their only virtue
was to draw the eye away from the floor mosaics, which were,
if possible, even worse. The angles of the walls and spires not
only seemed to defy nature, time, and space, but also good
building codes.
Nice description. Humorous Alan H, sort of.
"Yeah. I hate fast food."
GROAN!
"Terrible things, of course." Takashi gingerly reached out
his hand towards the mosaic. "Kiritsubo-san?"
The mechanic looked at him warily. "Yeah?"
"Duck. Now."
Kiri dove to the floor. Seconds later, a spinning, razor-
sharp wheel scythed through the spot her head had occupied
moments before.
"What the hell was that?" she yelped. Nodoka stared. Soun
and Genma just sighed.
It just boggles the mind that Genma can watch things like
this and think that Takashi is just lucky...
Takashi pointed towards the seemingly spartan, plain
stone hallway. Fishing a small rock out of his pocket, he tossed
it inside.
*THWACK*WHOOSH*THUD*PSSSSF*SHWING*THOT*
Heh. Nice, very effective. One sees this in movies, but
my first thought, reading the first paragraph, was: how can
the results of this be effectively described in prose? You
answered that question superbly.
""When the boulder passes, run after it as quickly as you
Two quotes opening this speech.
Some of the traps were ruined outright. Others, tougher
or simply protected within the corridor, began to reset
themselves for the next time.
By the time they had, however, the Nerima expedition had
already passed, following as close to the boulder as possible.
Remarkly good set of plans for this temple Takashi's following...
From the pit came an odd, soft, mushy splatting sound,
similar to the noise a Great Serpent would make after having
an incredibly heavy boulder dropped on its head.
Guffaw.
"No," Takashi said, walking around the pit. "Really, I think
more enthusiasm than intelligence was displayed in the
construction of the temple's defenses. Come along."
NOW we see what Takashi meant earlier. Clearly he's right,
but even given "a complete technical readout" of this temple's
defenses, the study it took to determine this weakness is
quite interesting.
Atop the bowl and the stone produce lay a plain metal
implement, like a tuning fork with scoops on each end.
"The Sukhothai Tongs," Takashi breathed reverently.
Silence.
"Do you mean to tell me," Kiri finally said, voice quiet
and dangerous, "do you mean to tell me that we've spent the
last week in this jungle replica of Hell for... for... for
a stinkin' pair of prehistoric SALAD TONGS?"
Guffaw!!
"Although from the altar, it appears that radishs _and_ salad
lettuce were also venerated. This is truly a remarkable find."
The funny thing is, this isn't much of a stretch for academic
thinking...
"No, Miss Nodoka. You can't," Inji said mildly, stepping out
from the shadows of the entryway.
Naturally, although the contemplation of what Inji had to
go through go get here _does_ give one pause...
"Kuonji-san, isn't it?" Takashi said cheerfully. "My
memory for faces is terrible."
Inji's left eye twitched slightly, marring his mask of
relaxed unconcern.
Interesting way to disturb Inji's composure... Makes sense,
though. To find out that your single great rival barely
knows who you are, even if you don't believe it, would be
_very_ disconcerting...
"We can't let that bastard win," Kiri righteously declared.
"That belongs in a museum."
Snicker. One wonders if Kiri now has a Great Future in
Archaeology ahead of her...
"I know how to beat him now," Genma said quietly. "I've
been thinkin' about it all the way here, and I know how."
I like this. He _IS_ Ranma's father, after all.
"An exchange of banes," Kiri told him. "A secret or truth
terrible or private enough to hold the giver to his word for fear
of it being revealed by the other party." She winced. "Sorta a
social version of mutually assured destruction."
<clip>
The lean killer sighed, a look of mixed reluctance and
wistfulness entering his eyes. "Come around the corner here,
Kiritsubo, and all shall be revealed."
"Just like in the old days"? What could Inji have told
Kiri previously?
"Sorry," they heard Kiri gasp. "It's just... jeez, I've known
you for years, and I always had the feeling that there was
something more about you than you were telling, but I thought
it was just that you were psycho or delusional or gay or
something."
"I would think that you of all people would have some
sympathy for my position," Inji said, sounding vaguely injured.
"Oh, I do, I do. But don'tcha think you might have gotten...
just a bit carried away with this? I mean, I was your closest
associate, and you sure had me fooled."
Suspicions about Inji confirmed...
"Well," Inji's voice finally said. "I'm not sure if I should
offer you my congratulations or condolences. Probably the
latter, considering."
"Condolences either way," Kiri said, her voice sounding
regretful. "I can't win, Inji-kun. However it happens to fall."
<clip>
"No, I suppose not. You're trying to use this as a weapon
against me, aren't you? Because if I-"
"Got it in one, Inji-kun."
Intriguing!
"Maybe. That doesn't mean you have to hurt yourself." He
hesitantly reached out to hold her hand. "Look...why don't you
start telling me how business went, at the end of each week?
I'd kinda like to hear it."
She glanced at him, startled. "Trying to keep me honest?"
"You? Honest? Be serious. But no more hiding, okay?" He
met her gaze. "I can handle hearing it, is what I'm saying. I'm
not gonna hate you or nothing."
Very nice gesture on Genma's part. Quite touching.
"Screw you, garage ape."
"You only wish, pervert. You'll have to settle for your big
iron phal-"
And there was much violence.
Heh.
We returned to Nerima without incident. Soun
seemed a bit quiet, a bit thoughtful, and less willing to
fight. Takashi was in high spirits, as usual. Nodoka and
Kiri snarled and spat at each other... I'd like to say it was
all a misunderstanding, but, well, your mother is a very
broad-minded and driven woman. I'm sure you've heard
what her views of manly behavior are often enough.
Guffaw! "Broad-minded and driven"? How... interesting.
So we returned to Nerima, to home. Maybe we
should have stayed in dull, safe Laos...
Uh oh...
VERY nice conclusion. A very good ride. I'm really looking
forward to the next part of this!